8 Winning Tips for creating successful video on social

Video slays engagement rates compared to photo and text posts. While writing this post, I looked into my own (other) businesses Facebook dashboard and clicked on \”insights\”. Take a look…

If you are reading this then there is a chance that you know you need to be investing your time in \”social video\” – either about yourself as a content creator, or about you as a founder of your company, about your product itself, or to tell brand stories to engage your followers.

BUT, like the rest of us, you may feel intimidated by the minefield of facts, stats and algorythms. How to, where to, when to, how long for, and of course we worry about being on camera too. Gosh we hardly wrapped our head around boosting normal posts, to now find that we need to convert to video posts. Let us try and declutter and demystify the video space with some top tips :

1. Be Original

Facebook and YouTube prioritizes and rewards original videos. These are videos where there is a distinctive voice behind the page/brand, that can\’t be found on any other platform. Suzelle, with her quirky humour and character, creates original content for all her fun DIY snippets and gets high engagement on each video. Like the one below with over 2000 shares and 670 comments! Now that is rewarding and good brand building. Note to want-to-be vloggers, when you reach high engagement rates, start charging \”influencer fees\” for product placement OR make money from ad pre-roll on YouTube.

2. The three minute theory – NEW rules!

Facebook recently announced that they would priorize (push) content that is routinely watched for more than three minutes. They correctly surmised that since people are interested in this content, more people would want to see it, and whoops – it appears in more feeds (of similar audiences because Facebook wants you to stick around so they can make more money serving ads). So if you are creating a short video edit of say 45-60 seconds that is perfect, but if you are creating a longer video of say 2 min and 30 seconds, rather plan to make it 3 minutes (and 3 seconds to be safe) – so push your script and story to hit that beyond 3 minute reward point.

3. Do your page stats homework

Take a look at your page insights (Business pages naturally have Ads Manager, click on Insights). I checked ours and was reminded of how to schedule our very own posts (video included!) . However what must be taken on board if you are not resident in the USA, is that Facebook stats present as Pacific Time. For us in South Africa, I add on 6 hours to this graph and the UK would add on 5 hours. If you see the graph below, our peak engagement rates are thus 3-8pm and around 6.30 to 8am in the morning. This is good to know when scheduling your video posts for maximum engagement (note to self, content is king, but so is knowing your audience)

4. What not to do!

Bait – Facebook detects and demotes clickbait posts – e.g. when you make a leading comment that is not really true to the video like \”you will never believe what she did next….\” and when you open it, it is dull as dishwater. It may be tempting, but it\’s a short term fix with a long term problem.

Slideshows – There isn\’t much authenticity in a video that feels more like a slideshow post, so don\’t let your video be filled with static images. There are great tools out there to convert your slides into mini-movies – like Swish and Canva, that can do interesting dissolves and text titles – with handy music tracks to choose from. It is worth coughing up for the premium versions of the apps.

5. Loyalty

When your followers actively start to search and watch your videos, it sends a signal through for facebook to prioritise your distribution. If you are a content creator, you will get these loyal followers by being original, natural and consistent. If you follow successful influencers on how they did it, their top tip that pips all advice is to be 100% authentic!

6. Reward those that seek you out

Ensure your content is easy to find (don\’t make people hunt and struggle) – write clear titles, include tags.
Publish \”bonus\” posts – In between your longer videos, write a post or post an image to keep people engaged with your page
Set yourself apart from your competition by keeping your followers subscribed, engaged and interested. Product and service related businesses, make a mental note to not always post video posts that \”sell\”. For example, one of our businesses is a furniture company. We apply the rule of thumb is for every hard sale (such as a video of \”New Arrivals\”) we post a minimum of three interesting content-rich posts for our followers. For example \” Watch a tour of Kris Jenners new home\” or \”How to hang clusters of pictures\”. Yes it is hard work, but if you want to succeed, you have to give to get.
It helps you to create content-rich videos if you set aside time to plan! Keep a folder/diary of ideas and plan your content way in advance. Stay on topic with current trending events, as well as around your industry calendar \”..and we wish our audience on Mother\’s Day/Women\’s Day\” as we know 80% of our audience are women age 35-44. If you are beauty blogger, you may want to review hair and make-up as \”last night at the Oscars\”. Travel Agents should not just be selling a ski destination rather, give 10 top tips for skiing for the first time with toddlers. You get it…!

7. Engagement

When you want to cheat the system a little (before your following is significant enough), get 10 people to like your video in the first few minutes of it being posted and your video will be on the watch list for prioritisation. Facebook prioritises posts that create real and meaningful conversations between people – and the faster the better.

Inspire people to have a conversation in the comment section \”which one do you prefer\” or \”tell us what you think\” (but take care not to sound patronising especially if your market is a sophisticated audience)

Organic engagement is still the most rewarded interaction. Do not be nervous to ask your viewer to help you gro by please liking and sharing your content, or to give you the thumbs up. lets see if we can get this to 10 000 thumbs up by Friday\”

8. Measuring your results in creator studios

The best and easiest way to track performance is through Creator Studio (both Youtube and Facebook have Creator Studios). This is a one-stop-shop where you can have an overview of everything going on across your pages.

Using Creator Studio you can track:

How long people are watching your videos for and track the performance of the video.
You can see who clicked to play or who let it auto-play
Using Creator Studio’s Loyalty Insights, you are able to track your returning viewers against the posts you produce. If you notice a sudden spike in engagements – see what it is and that will help you learn more about the behaviour of your followers. Keep doing whats working and change what causes drop out.
Once you have significant video traction, you can also monetize with allowing ads in Facebook and in YouTube in the creator studio.

So thats it for now. We hope that was helpful and inspirational for you to jump onto the video bandwagon . If you need a nudge and a guiding hand, at The Digital Coach.co specialise in helping our clients create affordable content for social and for their websites. We can help with scripting, planning, videography and editing. For those that are nervous about being filmed, we do help and coach you and after a few minutes you will hopefully forget you are being filmed. If you would like us to help you create great sharable video content for your channels, visit www.thedigitalcoach.co or contact us at amanda@thedigitalcoach.co

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